Upgrade - 260: It's Not Just a Desk

Episode Date: August 26, 2019

There's a lot that separates the U.S. and the UK, like the definition of "lemonade" and the launch date for the new Disney+ streaming service. But nothing can separate our hosts this week, as they convene in Jason's office to discuss the impending iPhone event and to reflect on nearly five years of their status as independent workers and of Upgrade itself.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 260 today's show is brought to you by linode pingdom and pdf pen from smile my name is mike hurley and i am joined or i am joining mr jason hi jason snow hi mike hurley we have done this show in person in a room together many times now i have recorded with you in a room in the same room more than i've recorded with any of my co-hosts i think it's nice we always manage a couple of upgrades a year i think but you have never recorded in my office that is true i am i am for once recording in the actual snow zone you're definitive recording in the actual Snell Zone. You're definitively in the Snell Zone now.

Most definitely. Although, a little bit of trivia, you know you're not the first person to do an episode of Upgrade with me here in my office. Okay. We had James Thompson on a couple years ago and he was actually in my office. Oh, yes, he was. That was literally, he was sleeping in this office yes he was that was literally he was sleeping in this room and so we woke him up and put him on upgrade that's what you can expect when you stay in the snow zone yeah our hashtag snow talk question this week comes from ryan and ryan

wants to know jason what is your favorite summer drink this is uh i i was i was stumped when I saw this question, but I think I'm going to answer and say, I don't drink a lot of iced tea, but I like iced tea in the summertime. A little sweet tea. It's a nice treat. You might put some lemon in there, squeeze a little lemon in there or something, but a sweet tea, I like that. And then another favorite is the old uh as learned in england the old lager top you put it take a beer put some lemonade on it you can do the british lemonade which is just seven up or or you can have the uh american lemonade which is a sweet sweet lemony drink and either one is good with uh mixed in with a beer a light beer first time i came one first time i came to america

of drinking age american drinking age uh i was in a bar and i asked for a vodka and lemonade it's very confusing to everybody both the person the bartender and then to me for what I was given, which was like lemon, like some lemon thing with simple syrup in it to sweeten it and vodka. I was very confused because what I wanted was a Sprite and vodka, like a vodka Sprite. That was what I wanted. But never have to ask in that way in England. See, it's the fact that you're using words that mean they sound like other words right they mean something that if you had ordered like a a body and and lem lem they would have been like hey speak american and then you've been like you could have explained it but lemonade that's a

thing that we all agree on what it means except except it's not the same. Vardy and Lemlem. Governor. If you would like to send in a Snell Talk question, just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk and it may be included for a future episode of Upgrade. One piece of follow-up this week, follow-out, if anything, really, RelayFM Family Feud.

We produced a pretty incredible, I think, episode of Connected, which was our RelayFM 5th Anniversary Extravaganza. It's episode 257 of Connected, and you can go get it now if you want to, and I think that you should. Jason, I would like to thank you publicly for the incredible

work that you did as a game show host for our big, wonderful 20 RelayFM host game show that we put on in front of a very excited live audience um that we have had the pleasure of putting shows on in front of many audiences this was the audience who was the most engaged they were going wild the whole time it was fantastic uh So yeah, people should go and listen to this because I think that it is a ton of fun. I guess I fulfilled my lifelong ambition

of being a game show host. You were so good that I thought we would maybe only do this once. I do not feel that way anymore. I want to do it again at some point. All right, we'll have to find a way to do it again. It was absolutely fantastic. I'll just point out

that we have a whole round of questions from the survey. This was all driven by that survey we mentioned where we surveyed, turns out more than 3,000 RelayFM listeners and asked them a bunch of dumb questions and that drove the game show. We have some left over.

So maybe we'll... Yeah, we did spoil one, but maybe we will find a way to work those into some other project in the next few months life finds a way thank you questions as well one of the reasons i don't want to spend too much time doing follow-up and such today is because we have a lot of upstream stuff to talk about because there's a lot of things going on uh a lot of it is disney D23, which is Disney's conference. The number changes every year, right?

If I'm remembering rightly. I don't. I think it was 22. I don't even know anymore. Does it change every year? Who knows? But Disney put on this event every year where they share a bunch of news

to a bunch of their properties. I've got this breaking news it's always called d23 because uh the company was founded in 1923 can you imagine how big the d23 conference is going to be in 2023 it's going to be a pretty big mind-blowing but so there you go i just assumed that it just was iterated every year but at d23 it's always d23 there is a ton of stuff uh one of the big things that happened was which has led to multiple friends of mine i don't know if you've had this sending me a link saying that's quite a lineup it's quite people keep sending me this because they know we care about such things because disney created a disney plus twitter account and instagram account because

they're starting the wider promotional stuff now. The March to November when they launch. And they showed off a trailer. Now, the trailer is all stuff we already knew. The trailer includes all of the different things that we will have seen, right? So it includes clips of The Simpsons, clips of the Marvel movies, clips of the Pixar movies, all of them, right? Sure. So there's a ton of stuff, all the vault movies. And what I liked that they did was they were showing like the vault movies like Aladdin, Cinderella, The Lion King, and then the modern

versions of all of those movies as well. So this is all kind of out there. But as well as this, Disney announced a ton of new content that we didn't know about before. Right. There's some reality content. I think Kristen Bowe is like executive producing a reality TV show about people that were like in their high school or earlier on in life. They were doing like musical theater stuff. And now they're coming back to it again it's called encore kind of clever um there is a world according to jeff goldblum yeah there's a full trailer for that um and then there is some of the stuff in the properties that

we're aware of so ewan mcgregor is reprising his role as obi-wan for an original series which i was very surprised to see all of that. Yeah, I think the story there is that they were working on an Obi-Wan Kenobi movie. And when Solo didn't do well at the box office, they sort of like pulled the plug on those anthology movies. And it sounds like what they really did behind the scenes is say, look, we need content for Disney Plus. Why don't we use stuff like this that's in development and just turn these into essentially mini series little short series six hours eight hours who knows what but something relatively small and we can roll out and they that deal is done now and and they say that

they i think they have a script and it's as far as we can tell this is something that emerged from the wreckage of that movie that they were thinking of doing that they decided not to but in the end yeah so there's going to be after the mandalorian you know there's also going to be this uh obi-wan series in development that they're going to shoot next year they don't have a release date but it's going to shoot next year so it may not even be a 2020 show but they're they're multiple star wars series now sort of like stacking up live action star wars series and then then on the Marvel side, we already knew that they were doing a whole bunch of stuff that was based on characters from the Marvel Studios MCU movies that they were spinning into live action or animated series. first drop of three Marvel Universe characters that we haven't seen before being done by Marvel Studios and original programs on Disney+, which is She-Hulk, Ms. Marvel, and Moon Knight. So we've

been, on The Incomparable, we've been joking about Moon Knight, which is, if you don't know who Moon Knight is, he's kind of like Marvel's Batman. He's Crap Man. But he wears white, and somehow it stays clean. I don't know how that happens.man he's crap man but he wears white and somehow it stays clean i don't know how that happens and there's he's an interesting character actually if you dig below that but on top level he is my marvel's batman moon knight is the outlier here because she hulk and ms marvel marvel already have movie properties that have analogs of these characters we understand what hulk is we know marvel captain marvel right because ms marvel is another iteration of sort of yeah captain marvel is was ms marvel and then they

introduced this is going to be kamala khan who was introduced about i think five years ago written by g willow wilson she's a muslim girl who lives in jersey city new jersey and she idolizes captain marvel essentially and takes up her old name as ms marvel and then she hulk is the cousin of bruce banner who gets i think a blood transfusion from her cousin and ends up with hulk powers is i think the way that they did in the comics and um i hope that's not the way because that doesn't seem very logical i don't know i mean we could argue that she hulk not a great a great name in the modern, through modern eyes, maybe not the best name for it. Moon Knight as a character is actually an interesting angle, too, because Moon Knight is a guy with multiple personalities. And so there's a sort of, like Legion, which Legion actually did, I think, a pretty good job of grappling with.

So, there's some different stories to tell in all of these worlds. We don't know anything more than that, that they've obviously just sort of been planning something with these characters. And, you know, Marvel's movie slate is so stacked up. these characters and you know marvel's movie slate is so stacked up it's kind of the opposite of of star wars where they're pulling movies off and turning them into tv shows with marvel when you look at what movies they're planning like they don't have room for the characters and stars they already have and so disney plus for them seems to be a really nice outlet where they can spin some stuff off that they want to do but is not gonna you know make it in the in the 2020s in a movie so they might as well put it in a tv show or maybe it's a way to trial out characters

they think could be good for the mcu would not surprise me at all if these characters showed up in movies down the road i think that they they don't want to do what they did with their last round of tv where it was a separate thing and even though they claim to be in the same universe they never crossed over i this is supposedly integrated in a better way so that you could see ms marvel appear in a captain marvel when the avengers assemble exactly there could be way more of them in the background yeah uh the app itself there's some information about that um so there will be ios and tv os apps on day one uh they're going to be supporting 4k as a user you will be able to have four simultaneous streams and seven profiles per user account so you know this is one of those things well let's be real

you can share your login with friends yeah and this is netflix charges you a lot more if you want 4k and and many logins at once so so that disney plus deal is even better now because the disney plus pricing covers 4k with four streams yep um there's been some some demos of the application to some outlets as well and everyone's like it's nice right like it's clean um it's not in your face like netflix is but that also kind of makes it feel maybe it's not vibrant as netflix does but there's a lot of content there and it's available to you there are um there are plans to integrate with the apple tv app so it will be in the tv app but will not be a channel right so it'll know when you go to the tv app it'll say oh you've been watching the mandalorian and you want to watch episode three

now and all of that but it's not necessarily going to be sold as a as an apple tv channel so like it's not going to be on any amazon product at all actually yeah at least not so far which is interesting they've also been some launch details so heartbreaking time for me there are no there's no date for the uk no i what's shocking is that um canada and the netherlands which is an interesting one and it's got to have to do with deals with regulation and deals and and and quirks of every market. But Canada, who we always joke about being so late to the party in so many of these things. It goes all of these other places. And Canada is sort of off going, we're right here.

We're literally right next to you. Why? Canada is getting Disney Plus the same day as the U.S., November 12th. And so is the Netherlands. And then Australia and New Zealand a week later. um the same day as the u.s november 12th and so is the netherlands and then australia and new zealand a week a week later but we don't know anything about the uk no i think it's a month later that november oh no sorry you're right it's a week later yes a week later but outside of that they're like most places have been two years so who knows i mean there's clearly some deal probably

with sky which is preventing them from launching. Yeah. So it's going to be kind of funny that after all of this, who knows when I'm going to get to see it. I don't know if I will be able to use anybody's login from the US. It might not work. It's not too far to the Netherlands, just getting a rowboat. But it will be the question of is it going to be geo-locked

or is it just going to be account creating, like where you create the accounts, is that going to be locked? We just don't know what that's going to look like yet. So there might still be options for me if I want to get that content, which I do, but we'll see. Anyway, congratulations to Canada. Yeah, good work on you, Canada. There was a report coming from two different reports from two different places, but a lot of the information overlaps. One from Bloomberg and one from the Financial Times about Apple TV+. So where they overlap is that we're going to be seeing Apple TV+, launching by November.

Yes. For $9.99. Yeah. Although, even that, it's a Bloomberg report. Mark Gurman's got good sources. But the hedging in these stories is amazing. it's by november which doesn't mean and there was another story that said within the next two months two months which is not i mean not november but by november means it could be before november um and then the 999 is described as being one of as mark says one of the multiple

prices or launch strategies being considered right so that i mean it's so in flux and this is often true with rumors where people point to a bad rumor and they say oh that got they got that wrong when in fact it was right at the time and then apple changed its mind this is um even more dynamic than that where they're sort of like the general feeling may be that they're probably going to price it at $9.99 but this has changed none of my feelings on this i still think nobody will be paying for it like you will be able to pay for it for $9.99 but i just think that the majority of people that get apple tv plus will get it some other way through through a bundle of some kind i i just genuinely think it'll be like you can pay $9.99 but if you're an apple music subscriber

you will just get it. Or like, I think that there'll be some, basically at my assumption will be that the majority of people that get Apple TV plus will not be paying directly for Apple TV plus. Cause, cause this is the argument around the nine 99, right?

So if we go on a little bit, the, the, the launch slate will include the morning show, amazing stories, which is the Steven Spiel spielberg uh anthology right c which is the most expensive tv show of all time adjacent momoa truth be told which i do not remember off the top of my head um the documentary series home which is i think that it

is that the one that's showing places in america it's famous people's homes that was it yep mtv cribs or like through the keyhole if that's the uk reference uh and possibly some more that's not a 9.99 a month service um especially as it's going to be launching around the same time as disney plus no and and no catalog to be determined although i did hear i've heard from a couple of people and i think it's just a theory i don't think there are any sources this is just sort of like from people out there who are pondering what Apple could do to sweeten this for $9.99. I did hear from a couple of people who said, what if Apple threw in rentals? Let's pause that.

We have an Ask Upgrade question later on. We'll answer that exact theory. But yes, that is a possibility. Where Apple was cutting into its own margins just to make this seem more valuable by saying and you get four itunes rentals a month or something like that i still think that that doesn't make it a service that people are going to pay 9.99 a month for yeah it's it's a hard it's a hard thing that's why i think um it's one of multiple prices slash launch strategies being considered to quote mark the argument of why would they do this for services revenue if nobody's going to pay for it but you've got to understand that like no one's going to pay

for it one way or another and it's a long it's a long game they're going to build up their library they're going to do what disney is also going to do because 699 isn't going to stay there they will slowly crank it up so one way to view it is essentially give it, piggyback it on other stuff now when you're starting out and become indispensable. Yes, but you get it to a point where – so like services revenue is growing anyway. You can also say, oh, and we now have X amount of millions of subscribers to Apple TV Plus. And then over time, just the balance starts to shift. And people sign up for X bundle because of Apple TV Plus, not because of Apple Arcade or whatever. That's how I still envision this going. Because Apple, a lot of the time, we know this, right?

They can be blind to pricing. But you've got to assume that they're not right now because their revenue situation is changing in many ways. And two, they know this isn't a good deal at $9.99 a month. Like, they're not oblivious. This is not a good deal. Now, I'm sure that there will be a free trial period where they'll hope that they will be able to convince people based on the content. But even if the content's really good in a free trial period, you can knock all their content out in three days. Yeah.

Right? Like even if they do start rolling out, which I still think that they will do, especially if it's a free trial period, it won't be everything all at once. They might like dole some out week by week. But yeah, we will have a lot more to say about this. But personally, I don't think that this doesn't change.

This report doesn't change how I feel the pricing is going to go initially. Yeah. And it is a shaky report. I don't doubt that these thoughts are happening inside Apple, but they don't even have the confidence to say this is what it will be. It's sort of like, oh, by then, maybe for this. And we don't really know. But I agree with you. It's I wouldn't put it past Apple to just come out and say flatly it's 9.99 and this is what you get but then it would be in one of these categories of apple misjudging i think because i think it'll be a kind of a disaster if they do it they've made a mistake and i would like to believe that they're paying more attention than this because you're seeing daily i mean people aren't

going to do it but you're're seeing the rhetoric right now. I'm going to cancel my Netflix subscription when Disney Plus launches. I understand what people are saying when they say that. It's like, I only want so many streaming services in my life and Disney Plus looks like a great deal. But the content isn't the same. If you enjoy Netflix TV shows, you're not going to get those on Disney Plus. So, like, canceling your Netflix, you will be losing something. And if you're happy to lose something because all you want is a streaming service in your life,

then yeah, Disney Plus on paper could be a better deal. But $9.99 a month for maybe six TV shows, and there's maybe two of them you actually will care about. Yeah, harder to say. All right, today's episode is brought to you in part by our friends over at Smile, and I want to talk to you a little bit about PDF Pen. It is the ultimate tool for editing PDFs on the Mac. You can add headers and footers and watermarks to your documents. You can forget fiddly PDF editing with their easy precision edit tool,

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So talking of Bloomberg and Mark Gurman, there was a big report wrapping up a bunch of stuff about the 2019 product releases. Some stuff we already knew, some there's new details about, but I thought would be worthwhile going through um to just kind of maybe tie up some loose ends because again it's like i say we know we know a lot of this stuff or we've heard a lot of this stuff but as is usual we we look to mark german and bloomberg these days as a way to especially just before an event is like just on the horizon but maybe just a couple of weeks away, as a way to be like, all right, this is what we're going to be expecting now, then let's let's

weed out the things one way or another as we're leading up to the event. And so there are iPhone details, iPad details, which I wasn't expecting and some Mac stuff as well. So the 2019 iPhones, three new phones. You know, we were talking about this last week, what the name is will be, and Mark is saying Pro for the two higher-end models. No details about the naming

for the XR successor. I know that you just wrote a big thing about that on Tom's Guide as well. Right, right. The idea of maybe the Xr is the 11 and the 10s successors are the 11 pro and i feel like if if they you know if if it is going to be pro then that's going to be it because if you've got two phones called the pro then what's the not pro well it's the regular one and then that the regular phone is now the XR, and that's going to be an interesting thing to unpack because this report from Mark Gurman is very heavy on details for what the quote-unquote high-end phones are going to have in them.

Right. Basically, the only things that I could weed out from this report is a faster processor, the addition of a second camera, and boosted AR capabilities from some additional sensors on the camera module. That's not big. I mean, and if you're saying this is the iPhone 11, so this is where the line begins, there's even less there. Because if we're comparing, let's imagine, right? You're going from XS to 11.

Right. The iPhone XS to the iPhone 11 will have a faster processor and maybe different colors. Right, because the camera will be, although the argument there is that they can say our base model iPhone 11 has real portrait mode, two cameras, which the 10r doesn't have well sure and it's and it and let's say the iphone starts at 749 which is useful for apple it's not what the iphone used to start at but it's not 999 bigger screen and it has the bigger screen which screen but you don't

have to talk about that you don't have to talk about that and a bigger screen you know for definitely not for everyone but i think what the phone market has showed us is that the bigger screen is a net positive yes people like big screens not everybody but like the market likes big screens they're they're more popular it is a little weird that if you want a smaller screen you have to spend more money but that's where we are yeah that isn't how everybody's doing it now but that is how apple will be doing it for the time being for the time being until there's a iphone 11 mini mini shuffle uh the two pro models will replace the 10s and the 10s max so we'll go with 11 pro and

go with 11 pro and i'm hopeful for 11 pro with sizes just like the ipad and macbooks let's hope so where you just there's no 11 pro max or anything like that there's just the whatever the the screen diagonals are for those two and that's it we just call them that the big one and the little one that would be the big one little one or like little buddy will be they'll be rounded in the way that they are but uh new camera system third lens for ultra wide photography excellent that's what i wanted i wanted an ultra wide camera um i think they look great on the android phones that have them i want to have that ability um and it sounds like they're doing software which is not surprising for apple at all that they're going to do some software to kind of intelligently sort of like

with the two cameras now where as you zoom it's flipping from one camera to the other and you don't see that they're going to be able to do this intelligence sort of capturing on all the cameras and you what the suggestion that mark german makes is that if you didn't get somebody in the frame it's actually got that wide angle shot behind it and you can essentially kind of like crop beyond the edges of your frame in order to get the other people that was a thing from a while ago and there was a report it was either from mark german or from nine to five mac i forget which one said that like that data will be saved on device for just a period of time, and then it's removed. Right, so you're not taking three pictures every time you do this,

but you've got some small period of time where you look at that selfie or you look at that group shot, and you go, oh, I missed this thing off the edge, and you can actually sort of crop back. I actually think that's not even a space thing. It is a privacy thing. So like you've taken a photo which you've framed. You know what the frame is, right? No, you're right. You're right.

And then there's stuff outside the frame that you assume is not captured. Oh, you may be not wanting specifically to be captured, right? So like keeping that there the whole time. When you're in your evidence dungeon, you don't want the incriminating evidence that's off to the side. The leaking box in the corner. You don't want that one in the frame. I want to read some quotes because this is some additional stuff which I think is interesting. So, the new system will also take higher resolution pictures rivaling some traditional cameras.

And photos taken in very low-light environments will improve too. That's night mode. It is night mode. That's what that is. It is incredibly, incredibly important that Apple shows off significantly improved low-light photography because this is the one area that they are getting destroyed on. Absolutely.

My Google Pixel 1 destroys the iPhone in low-light. So this would be a situation, I guess, where they're using all three lenses and some software in the hopes that they can have at least comparable shots to some of the other camera systems. And this is one that was new to me. Significantly upgraded video recording capabilities, getting them also closer to professional video cameras. What does that mean? I don't know.

Apple has developed a feature that allows users to retouch, apply effects, alter colors, reframe, and crop video as it is being recorded live on the device. I don't know what all of that would look like and why you would be doing that. They put clips inside the camera app? I mean, yeah, I guess that's what it is. But when I see both of those things from a software perspective all right this is how they demo this is the demo sure right you know like oh here watch us oh look let's take a picture of tim oh tim's arms cut out ah tim's

arms back right and then there's you know like a whole thing where they're someone's doing a skateboarding video and it's like oh and then we're putting a bunch of filters on the video and you can see how it affects and never get you know like i don't know yeah i don't know either that's um i mean it's it sounds like something very similar to what we see in the camera app where you have the ability to zoom in and out and maybe they maybe they've built a bunch of moves for video that smooth all of that out so that you you know you zoom in and out and maybe they maybe they've built a bunch of moves for video that smooth all of that out so that you you know you zoom out and you apply a color effect or whatever and it all just sort of continues smoothly instead of being abrupt yep so it seems more professional i don't know yeah there's some of that stuff like cropping i get it reframing fine but like

yeah there's some of that stuff like cropping i get it reframing fine but like people like do people want effects and colors in line in the video that's been we'll find out i guess so reverse wireless charging which is a phrase that i love is like your phone powers your home via no uh this is like charging your airpods charging that kind of stuff with the phone which is a great thing it's fine it's fine you see the what is it samsung ads that show that and where there's like somebody whose battery is almost dead and there's a a nice person they don't know who's there who taps that and you know the truth is that for that phone to recharge would take forever yeah this is good for portable devices not for phones like you know you would charge your watch or your airpods yeah yeah in a pinch

you could charge your airpods off of your phone battery that's that's okay some of the colorways for at least pro models i couldn't work out whether this also meant the 11 but i expect so uh will have matte finishes rather than glossy finishes give people the option somebody sent out a link the other day to the six color apple logo and said so six six iphones and six colors and i thought oh that would be really pretty i would like that but i don't see that happening because i think that at least the pro phones will have what is considered to be more traditional pro-looking colors or like high-end colors which are gold silver gray and i don't expect that to change i would like to see color but i just don't see it happening yeah multi-angle face id sensor now i think this is the iPad's Face ID sensor because it references a wider field of view so it could be flat on the desk, which the iPad can do and the way that the iPhone cannot.

And multi-angle, I'd also expect landscape. So really, I expect whatever they've done for the iPad to come to the iPhone. Right. So that will be better. That's a big feature. In some ways, that could be the single biggest improvement in usability on this device. And you would notice it every single day. Yeah.

If it unlocks faster and it unlocks on your desk when you're close enough to flip up with your finger, but not close enough to be directly hovering over the camera and have it know that it's you and unlock, that's good. That's really good. Better water resistance. It's not really a feature people ask for, but it's great to have it know that it's you and unlock, that's good. That's really good. Better water resistance. It's not really a feature people ask for, but it's great to have it. So for me, it's all about Apple's policy because Apple has gone, so this story says, oh, now it's going to be rated for more than 30 minutes or whatever it is. But we know people, multiple people who have had their phone die because it was in water. And the truth is that Apple talks about water and dust resistance, but Apple's warranty does not cover water damage. So they

make all these claims about water resistance, but only the Apple Watch is actually covered to be submerged. The rest of it, you know know this is the story about how serenity caldwell a couple of years ago uh jumped in the pool with her uh then boyfriend now husband's um iphone to take some pictures in a swimming pool and she killed it and when she took it to apple they're like yeah there's water damage it's not covered so when i look at better water resistance i keep thinking well this is great apple but when is the water resistance in the iPhone going to be strong enough that you'll back it with a warranty? Because until then, I consider it irrelevant. It's basically splash resistance.

And what they're really saying is don't submerge your phone on purpose, but if you drop your phone in the toilet and it stays functional, then great. Which I would like them to say, no, if you submerge your iphone it's fine they i want that confidence because i think they mislead people into thinking that it's okay when it's not yeah apple never like some companies they never demo their water resistance they don't make advertising out no you're not supposed to you're not supposed to do it other than the apple watch because samsung uh they they demo their water resistance in advertising i guess the apple watch is nothing they can do if you if you create swimming workout types you are encouraging it no it's built to be in the water and that's like you're supposed to put your apple watch on the side and just shout every time you do a lap and like I went to Hawaii, I got my iPhone XS wet, and it was fine.

But I also was aware that if it wasn't fine, it was going to be my fault. If I want to listen to podcasts in the shower, which I do, the phone comes into the shower cubicle with me. Yes. I got over that, and that's what I do now. And there's a difference between getting water on and being immersed in right because the immersion there's pressure on all sides it's going to find whatever pathway it can into your hardware unless it's truly um you know waterproof but uh in the shower just getting splashed on is is less of an issue but still if they found water damage they would they blame you so what i'm what i'm saying is i hope that as we take this path toward better water resistance on iphones that at some point apple will have a confidence to say

yes you can put your iphone in water now and it's okay no 3d touch here we are i need to wait this is one where it's like i'm operating a wait and see approach to how i feel about this because i am a fan of 3d touch but if haptic touch gets to the point where like i don't need 3d touch and i don't care about 3d touch i want the functionality not this not the actual use do you think they've done anything to have to touch that they didn't put in the 10r i mean the 10r is sort of like fake 3d touch but only for some things well the ipad has all this stuff now right so you can long press on a link and it pops up a little menu and you get a preview and you you know like so as long as all of the functionality is replaced by haptic

touch which wasn't the case with 10r then great i have yet to put um i haven't put 13 on an iphone okay so i don't know what it looks like but what i do know is that on my ipad i now have all of the functionality that i would want really so more so in fact like i like that you get the little full preview now which is not a thing that you got with 3d touch so as long as i get what i want with the iphone and it's kind of what i asked for you know way back when which is um 3d touch especially since it's not on all devices, how do you find a common gesture? And the answer is obviously tap and hold is the answer there. Now, I'm going to channel my inner John Gruber here

and point out that the difference is that you don't have to hold for a 3D Touch. You just push, and it's instant. And the problem with tap and hold is you have to wait, and that slows you down. And it's not great, but the problem is i think that they 3d touch the impression i get is that 3d dutch on phones was expensive because it limited their design reach because of how they had to do it with the pressure sensors and they couldn't bring it to other ios devices so they got in this position where they then have to generate um equivalents for the ipad

and at that point what are we doing here right yeah i didn't know i never tried it before but you can do peek and pop on messages on ipad now i'd never thought to try it until now because i could never do it before so i never even thought so you just touch and hold you just touch and hold in the message list and a little message. So that seems like the jig is up for 3D Touch. And the same as on iPhone, which continues to be my top tip, you can press and hold on a message, and you can read the message, but it doesn't show the message as red in red receipts.

There is the Mike Cuddy top tip again, and now it applies to the iPad as well. Nice. You know, I have a Magic Trackpad 2 here 2 here which has force touch and i never use it it's just i i guess what we've learned is that um is that that's not a feature that's discoverable enough for it to be something that you can rely on yeah i think really i think that the force touch 3 3D Touch, Haptic Touch, whatever, I think it only really makes sense to people when they're directly manipulating the screen.

I think it doesn't work with a mouse pointer. I don't think that on a trackpad, the kind of disconnect, I don't think that it works out for most people. Yeah. So that's the iPhone. The 2019 Apple Watch, new new cases so we knew about this already right like titanium and uh ceramic right um and a focus on software no other big changes yeah after our conversation last week i wrote a whole macworld column about this and you know

there may be an apple watch series 5 i'll be interested to see what they say about it and if it's anything particularly notable. There may not be. There may be, in fact, even, somebody suggested this to me on Twitter and I wouldn't put it past Apple, to do a stealth update where the Series 4 gets is slightly different but they just don't brand it as series 5 because there's no evidence in any rumors or reporting or anything that there's enough of a hardware difference for them to actually call this apple watch series 5 but they did register some new models on the like the russian eec trade bureau thing thing that they do like so i i'm kind of fascinated that we're this close to an apple event and the status of the apple watch is still a mystery but um but my macro column just followed up on what we were talking about last week which is there's so much to be gained in their um in their software development and in making independent watch apps and making it better for developers to develop better watch apps that like that that's where they really need to push with the apple watch if they took six months or a year off from a new

piece of hardware and just vary the materials like they vary the watch bands i think they'd be okay they can and maybe will do a series five watch but they don't have to that's it's interesting for them to be in that position new processes and camera upgrades for the ipad pro yeah and probably not in september right presumably i i would coming before the end of the year yeah presumably because this wasn't just about this event so i i would imagine that some of these other things are going to be either not an event or that there will be an october event but um i'm i don't know moderately surprised that there's a hardware update to the ipad pro a year later but if they are boasting about how great that processor is this gets they get to push the processor forward here

and the cameras yeah and a new 10.2 inch low-end ipad so this is the regular ipad will become 10.2 inches i don't know how that's going to look i don't know if it will have a home button or it probably won't have face id for sure i would assume you'd think but they would do the bezel reduction thing i don't know it's fascinating to see how they because they already we have the ipad air back and now they're going to do a change to the low-end ipad i don't know it's it's weird it's weird but this will as mark pointed out in his article uh after a decade there will no longer be a 9.7 inch screen yeah on the ipad it's a big moment if it if it comes to place that the uh that the original life ipad size is

gone like it's completely unknown what that is it might be an old ipad design it might be a brand new ipad design we don't know but knows those are two things i wasn't necessarily expecting this year to be on oh i definitely wasn't expecting any things I wasn't necessarily expecting this year. I definitely wasn't expecting any changes to the iPad Pro this year. I think I've told people that. We've told people that as much in our Skype grade segments. But if you have bought an iPad, I wouldn't worry. No, it's got the next processor in it, and I doubt it will have much.

If it has two cameras on the back great the processor as well it's like there's so much headroom on these devices as it is right now i wouldn't be concerned 2019 mac lineup so mac pro and pro display xdr still on track for this year good to know i don't think that there was any argument on that but but good to know and uh argument on that but but good to know and uh government does not mention any other desktop macs so i'm as i mentioned last week i was gonna i am when i get home i'm gonna i'm gonna be getting the yi mac pro yay uh now that i feel vindicated in that um and uh we're gonna be looking at potentially seeing the 16 inch macro MacBook Pro as hoped for. Yes, long rumored. And there was that confusing set of rumors where it sounded like, is it this year?

Is it next year? And Gurman says, no, that's this year. That's 16-inch MacBook Pro. So I can envision an October event. Who knows where it will be? Where in the world is the October Apple event with what we did last year in Brooklyn, which is iPad Pro and new Mac hardware. With the iPad Pro.

And maybe that's the official Mac Pro unveiling. The 10.2-inch iPad, 16-inch MacBook Pro, and the Mac Pro now available. That's an October event. Sounds like that to me. Pro now available, that's an October event. Sounds like that to me. Because September will also include Apple Arcade, Apple TV Plus, some other software stuff probably, recap of iOS, recap of iPadOS. Yeah, and they'll pitch that as the Pro event come October.

I think that's probably the most likely, yeah. And also, I mean mean there is the whole question which could throw all sorts of stuff like when is the software coming out because it might not it might not be when we expect i yeah i mean the betas for me while usable still feel shockingly not ready to ship and they're still churning them out though they are i mean i like that that they're they're working on them but it's away for for ios 13 to be you know maybe more like three or four weeks away i just i don't know i don't know if i were apple i would just uncouple this stuff from the hardware ship and and ship it later but we'll see what they do it just feels like

the stuff but like what about the whole third camera right right what if the third camera is phone with three cameras on it but i can only use two of them like they have to find a way to make it work yeah maybe they can and as we spoke about before they should always have the backup plan of that new hardware can somehow work in the old software. Remember when the portrait mode came out and it was in beta? It wouldn't surprise me if that's what they do as their backup. Their fallback plan is iOS 12 something. And on those particular phone models, there is a beta mode that is essentially like a beta version of the camera app from iOS 13.

And you're stuck with that for a month until iOS 13 ships. It wouldn't bother me as long as I can use the features that are in my new fancy $1,000 phone. Yes, indeed. Because it would, and I can't imagine that Apple would do it any other way. I cannot imagine them saying like, all right, buy the phone in September and then sometime in October. You can use your third camera. Yeah, probably not. way. I cannot imagine them saying like, alright, buy the phone in September and sometime in October, that third lens will work.

You can use your third camera. Probably not. And there were some other products mentioned. I'm not sure if these are 2019 or not, but cheaper HomePod with two tweeters instead of seven. Great. Smaller, I would expect

to then. Go for it. Smaller, I would expect, too, then. Go for it. Smaller, cheaper, better price, more likely to sell them. Should be powered on battery, I think. Oh, interesting. Why not? Have it in the back garden. If it's smaller, I don't know why you'd want to necessarily... We'll see.

And water-resistant AirPods with noise cancellation. Still in the works. Still in the works. Where are those headpods, Jason? I don't know. That's what I want. I'm intrigued for an Apple

branded version some pro headphones. I would be interested to see what they look like. And this is mostly just because I want to buy some nice wireless headphones

but I'm refusing to do it for as long as this rumor is potentially still around. I think that's probably smart. Because I don't, I'm not necessarily that interested in what's available from above.

But noise cancellation in AirPods, I'm really intrigued to see what that would look like. I think there are some Sony in-ear things right now that have noise cancellation which people seem excited about yeah because most mostly if you're sticking something in your ears the cancellation and not over your ears the cancellation is not the thing it's it's reduction you're blocking the outside sound from coming into your ears so with this it sounds like they're

still trying to you gotta have a microphone which have a microphone. Which they already do. Right. But a microphone good enough to detect those things and then do some inversion and have it sound good. Yeah. Could be. If my memory serves, the AirPods are doing something already with that. Right. Where they're listening.

When you're on a phone call, the microphones are picking up. Oh, right. Right. To reduce the noise. To reduce the noise. And trying to reduce the noise. Sure. And I know that it's a big jump from that to noise cancellation, but, you know, there's stuff already happening in those.

They're working on it. So that's kind of where we are. I mean, my hope is we're drafting next week. I hope so. We'll have to hear this week to know whether that draft is happening next week. But I hope it is. All right. Today's episode is brought to you by our friends over at Pingdom.

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Go to pingdom.com slash RelayFM right now for a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Then when you sign up, use the code UPGRADE at checkout to get a huge 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. So as I am sitting here right now with my colleague and co-host, Mr. Jason Snell, my colleague and co-host Mr. Jason Snell. With the time being as it is,

which is late August, early September of 2019, we are both celebrating five years of a bunch of things. That's true. So we had RelayFM's five year anniversary. But it's also

coming up in like two weeks? Yeah. The five year anniversary of Six Colors and uh-huh your self-employment yes i'm five years self-employed in about two months time uh-huh it's a big time for us yeah i wanted to talk about it and i wanted to do it before because the thing is my last time we may get to talk about this before everything starts to go wild for the next couple of months my six colors anniversary was the day the iphone shipped that's when i started the site because i had an iphone review yeah and um the you know also the first day of upgrade too yeah exactly the same day and then And then the IDG layoffs were all literally the day after

that event, that September event, when they introduced the Apple Watch but didn't ship it, and then the new iPhones. So it's all five years ago. And so I wanted to talk about it now because we are going to be very, very busy with the stuff know, the stuff from Apple, whatever it is in the next couple of months. It's kind of our busiest time of year in a lot of ways, this rolling into the holidays with new Apple products thing. So, you know, I thought you have done, there's a great episode of Analog where you and Casey talk about this. There is a great episode of Connected where you and Stephen did the relay Q&A for the fifth anniversary. and you talk about a lot of the aspects of the business. But I did want – I've been thinking about this because it's been five years for me coming up, too, and five years for us doing this show, and they're all together, and five years for Relay, and it's all kind of connected.

And so I thought it was worth at least mentioning that I have had as a part of this process and thinking about the Relay fifth anniversary, it gave me some realization about, I don't know how to describe it, about what we do and the fact that I never expected it to be temporary at all. But there's some hedging you do when you're starting out doing something new of like, well, we'll see how this goes. And then what ends up happening, I've found, is that sometimes you hedge and, well, we'll see how this goes. And then you turn around and five years have passed and you haven't actually gone off of some of those assumptions of I did this temporarily. actually gone off of some of those assumptions of i i did this temporarily and and and so you and i are sitting here across a desk this is my new desk that i just bought jason's been very excited about this new desk it's a very nice new desk but but it was it's been funny since he even talking about it to me over the last week but the realization of it really was and this is why i'm kind of excited more than it's not just a desk It's that the other desk that's off to Mike's left, because I got desks everywhere

in this office right now. That was bought in November of 2013 for me to set up my home office, which was also a little bit of a hedge about me going out on my own because I was unhappy with my job and I was thinking of quitting. And even though I didn't for another almost year, I was getting ready and also just trying to create a workspace for myself in my house because I didn't have a home office. I was using a laptop on the bed or on a couch. And so, I bought that desk, this little desk as a hedge, as a temporary thing. And you turn around and it's been five and a half years since I've been using that desk. And Lauren and I had this conversation about how a lot of my assumptions about my workspace, and I think probably beyond that too, but the workspace is a great example.

I made in 2013, 2014 as temporary decisions to let's see how it goes. And then you turn around and realize, oh, I've been using kind of a lousy desk for five years. This shows no sign of ending, right? I should probably actually have a better workspace than I do. But it's just, it made me laugh because it was a time when you know none of us really had uh were sure about what we were going to be doing and and then you turn around and then five years have passed you saying november 2013 was just a funny thing to me because i remember because that was around i mean i don't remember exactly when it was but there was that all that we were at together which was the first time me and you had ever sat down together and it was probably around that was probably yeah october

november because that was when we had a breakfast and we you were talking about your desire to go out on your own yeah and i was talking about my desire to go out on my own and we were both encouraging each other at that over that breakfast to to do it and it was just kind of like a funny thing to think about as we were both clearly very much going through all of that then and then to see where we are now six years later it's kind of it's just like a funny thought but i agree with you like i i i am a little bit more reflective in this way. Like, I think about this stuff frequently. But there are still a bunch of things. And as I'm thinking about what I want to do next year, I'm thinking about getting some time back because I've had some work changes in the last year. I've

got some different things that I want to be able to put my time into that weren't options for me even six months ago. and i want to see where they could take me now um and i think that it's really important to be able to challenge those assumptions but like talking about like desk stuff my office that i've been in for two years it needs to be completely ripped out and started again because i had a very different idea of what i wanted to be doing in that space to what I'm actually doing in it now. Like I had a couch in it on a PlayStation. Now there's no couch on a PlayStation.

But my office is still built around this idea of I'll play video games in there. But I don't. I play them in the front room on the HDR TV rather than this 25, 30 inch or whatever TV I have that I've had for a while. So like things change. But I did want to ask you though about that irrespective of your wonderful desk. It's right here. It can hear you.

It's right here. It's a very nice desk. People want to know the desk by the way so you should tell them the desk. It's the Wirecutter desk, right? It's the Wirecutter desk. It's right on the side. It's written there. You can actually read the name. Uplift desk. It's the wire cutter desk it's right on the side it's written there you can actually read the name uplift desk it's the uplift desk i didn't get the bamboo it's the uplift v2 okay i didn't get the bamboo top which is the standard i actually got the reclaimed douglas fir it's that's an old piece of wood it's great looks great love it but are you where you thought you would be um no okay no not at all and it's funny

one of the things that took a while and you can listen to those first 49 episodes of free agents to hear me talk about it in detail with david sparks but i spent the first couple of years i don't know about you um every day was like a, how's it going? Is this still working? What's my runway? You know, how much time do I give myself to do this? Am I worried about this? And what I found is that it took a couple of years for that to fade into the background where it just sort of, not that it isn't still there and not that you don't have to be paying attention and not that there are difficult situations you have to deal with, but that you integrate it into yourself. It's like it's a part.

This is part of who I am is that I do this. And for the first year or two, I was like I had to process it every day that this was what I was doing. And I don't have to do that now. So in one way, it's very different in terms of where we thought we would be. So in one way, it's very different. In terms of where we thought we would be, like, for me, I didn't count on the podcasting being as big a part of my overall business and salary as it's turned out to be. And that's good because I did count on blogging, in six colors being a much larger part of my finances than it's turned out to be because, and this is a little insider baseball here, but

I sold a weekly sponsorship on six colors for the first year and a half or so that I did it. And since then, I could probably count the number of weeks I've sold on my two hands. Like the blog sponsorship thing. And you know, John Gruber, who is still wildly successful at this, even he has open weeks and has to drum up sponsorships and he does it and he still makes good money from daring fireball i assume but um even the best case scenario i would say daring fireball is that has signs of a struggle and for me and i remember talking to jim dalrymple from the loop about this at a wwc a couple years ago um and he experienced some similar things it's for me, if I had been relying on advertising on a blog to pay my bills, I would not be independent anymore.

Because that all pretty much stopped about two years in. But it was okay. I was relying on like six different things to pay my bills. And while the blog stuff went down, podcast stuff went up. And so it all worked out. I think there's actually a direct correlation between the two things. Probably so. No, I think it's...

I occasionally get emails from people asking me if they can buy an ad on next week's episode of sixcolors.com. I'll be like, I don't think... Do you want a blog? The form fill template is not completely worked out at that point. What do you want a blog template is not completely worked out at that point what do you want uh but i i think that a lot of that advertising has moved to punk i think so yeah i don't think it's i don't think they're unrelated and being in both has been a good was a good move from the start right yeah you were lucky that you wanted to be in podcasting as much as you wanted to be in writing because

otherwise we may not be having this conversation if i hated podcasting and only did it because it was there and it was an opportunity and i and what i really had to do was write and only write this would be i wouldn't like my job right now because my job is more podcasting than i ever anticipated it being it's not that it isn't writing i still am writing and I'm writing less than I thought I would be. But that's, I think, a natural function of the fact that the balance is different. And in fact, the great thing is it took me, I want to say, more than a year to do membership on Six Colors, to do direct support. And I felt really embarrassed about even asking. And then, of course, technically to set it up,

it took like four hours. So I spent a year worrying about it, year plus, and then it took four hours to make it happen. It took no time technically. It was all just about the worrying and asking people for money, which I didn't want to do. But the fact is, that's how I make money on Six Colors now is, you know, 90 some percent of what I do for Six Colors is because of the support of the, you know, people who are supporting Six Colors as members. Although there's a podcast component. We do one of the things we do there as a podcast. But like, I'm very grateful. And I'm sure Dan Morin is very grateful because he gets a piece of this, too. Like, that's keeping us afloat on that side. So the business, my point is just that the businesses continue to change,

but I am fortunate to have got enough different stuff going on that it's all worked. So my, the components of my job are very different than I would have expected five years ago, but in the biggest sense, yes, it is what I had hoped, but not in the details. Do you have any identity crises related to that? I used to. I used to cite the fact that talking to John Gruber one time, and he pointed out that he doesn't know what to think of himself as because he was making more money from podcasts than from writing. he doesn't know what to think of himself as because he was making more money from podcasts than from writing. Does that mean I'm a podcaster and not a writer? And I went through that too, a couple of years ago, where I realized there was a year where I wasn't making more money from podcasting than writing, but it was close and the writing was on the wall. But next year,

I would be more of a podcaster than a writer in terms of revenue. And it was a good six months of kind of head scratching. And if somebody asked me what I do, it's a little complicated. But in the end, they're not that different. They're different aspects of the same thing, I think, of what I do. So I'm kind of okay with it. But I do talk to people from my old career and that leads to some interesting things where they are kind of confused about what I do now because I'm writing you know a weekly column for Macworld and all that but then you're doing this podcasting stuff and my response is is often the podcasting stuff is more than half of my income stuff yeah and and from their perspective knowing me and coming from that background it's a real head scratcher for them by essence of

my two careers being so intrinsically linked i kind of can't have a misbalance so like have a misbalance so like i can't be more of my i can't have more of my money being made as a podcast host one month that much more than being a person who sells podcast advertising because they all kind of go because they they go together and of course like i do make money from shows that i'm not on but it tends to be that they fall within a small variance of each other of what's making more money, the ads that I've sold or the shows that I'm on, right? Because while I don't, the cut is smaller, like there's like a whole thing, right? But it is interesting to me how I do think of myself as a podcaster disproportionately more than I do as a person who sells podcast ads. But the cut of the money is much closer.

It's much more balanced than that. And that's just like a thing that will probably always be there for me. But frankly, these days, I do actually do less work related to that than I ever have done the sales part because I have a sales manager who does a lot of that for me now but it's still a huge part of my life but more I think of running the company being part of running the machine as opposed to just selling the ads is kind of where I fall now. But none of that is not what I thought it was going to be anyway. Really, what I'm trying to say is the struggles that you went through were not things that happened to me.

So I didn't spend a ton of time working out if it was going to work because I knew because I looked at the spreadsheets right and you were putting all of your um effort into this thing which was really fm which is for me that was a piece of a larger yeah selection of things that i had to put together a little bit understandably like because the podcasting it was always been from the beginning like good for both of us right like the stuff that you were doing of us there was money and the money's continued but you never were involved and not right like you don't know if i've sold all the way to the end of the year i do i mean you can always ask me right but like i know sure like there's no

debating on it yeah unless it's in our little web tool that shows me what ads have been sold. I don't know. But I know where I am. I know what the trends are for my own business because I am more directly linked to it. And I'm then going out to have to fix it otherwise, which is just a difference in the way that... I mean, of all the people that we work with,

I don't think that there are many more people that are as closely tied to the numbers as I am because I am the numbers generation machine yes so my point is like it's always been different for me it's like i've known if it's not working it hasn't been a like a oh i wonder if it's not going to work like i know so like there's just a difference for me plus the reason i started my self-employment journey was different to yours yours was more out of circumstance for the like you had a decision to make that was kind of put upon you where mine was like oh this is going much better than I thought it was going right it's like our

starting positions were different I was able to quit probably a year sooner than I thought I was going to be able to right like and that was borne out by like how long it then was until steven was comfortable because then it was like all right this looks good and i'm feeling comfortable now where for me it was like i know this is fine right now and i might as well just give it a go before and then really like put my all into it so one of the funny things about this and i know we told this story before but just to touch on it briefly because it's it's a fun thing is upgrade is not one of the original relay launch shows no but it's as close as you could possibly get because i knew i would be leaving and i wanted to do a podcast one of the things that we didn't do at idG was like, I didn't build a podcast around myself at IDG. We had the Macworld podcast, Chris Breen hosted it. And I felt like I didn't feel like any of us who were getting paid full time to work at IDG should go off on the side

and then start their own side business talking about the same stuff that they were talking about. And, you know, maybe that was the wrong decision. It did lead to Lex Friedman doing that podcast, Unprofessional, where he specifically didn't talk about tech because it would get him fired, which is funny. But when I left, I realized that, you know, yes, I absolutely have wanted to do this for a long time. And so I contacted you and Steven, because you guys had just were in the process of going out on your own. And so I would say by the time I don't know if it was when Relay launched or within like a week of Relay launching, we were talking about doing upgrade. But it had to wait until, as it turns out, that moment when the week after I left IDG where the iPhone was released and you were on vacation. I'm trying to find the email now i'm searching in my emails like i know it's in here somewhere but it was i may not have a copy of that it depends i probably do because i probably sent it from home and not from work like i know it was very early i mean this is maybe a little macabre, I don't know. But tomorrow is five years since my granddad died.

And the email that I got from you telling me about all of this was when I was at my granddad's wake. So I know it's like a close... I mean, that was just a very strange afternoon for many reasons. It's like, here's a bunch of things happening to you. But, like, it was very, very soon. I mean, we had a couple of weeks, we were planning for a good few weeks. But, like, as we've, as has been shown by, like, the last couple of weeks, RelayFM is, like, five years and a week old at this point.

Right? So, like, it was within, like, two weeks of the company existing that you got in contact which was wild like that is just a wild thing that happened to us but you're right it was essentially still a launch show and clockwise at that point because that became within a month they were our seven shows where it was five before then yeah and and we we brought those in thanks to that idg nameless idg executive who said go on take clockwise it's still ticking i'm pretty sure all those executives are gone long gone from idg and clockwise that clock clock is still ticking it is still taking amazing very successful show for us which we're very happy about we love clockwise yeah but yeah that's it

five years kind of hard to believe and yet also it feels i think one of the big things is it feels natural now that this is what we do yes this is who we are and on mondays we do upgrades and have done every week for nearly five years yeah go us Yay! This is the upgrade five-year celebration. Yes. We probably won't even mark it because it's going to happen at just the wrong time. There's no game show component, which is good. Thank you, Upgradians, I guess I should also say, for being here. Whether you've been here all five years or are a recent convert thank you we said this at 200 and it still stays the same like

upgrades trajectory over those five years has been incredible and it's you know it's both it's a very large outlet for us both now and that is because of our wonderful upgradians yeah absolutely it is it is and i will say about this podcast is not, we follow the trends and we figure out what we want to talk about. So, it's not necessarily exactly the content that we would have expected in episode one. But, and we've grown and progressed and learned a lot of things and I think it's a better show because of it. But this is what I wanted to do. This was definitely, this is what I wanted to do as one of the pieces of starting my own independent career was I wanted to have that podcast that we could do every week that people listen to and that we talked about the issues of the week. And that was, you know, one of the, not to belabor this terrible metaphor, but like, you know, the stool with the three legs, that kind of thing. It's like one of the not to belabor this terrible metaphor but like you know the the

stool with the three legs that kind of thing it's like one of the legs of the stool like you got to have that podcast that's your like the talk show like atp i i want to have that and that's upgrade and it is exactly again not in the details but in what it does it's uh i would say it's even more than i could have hoped for five years ago so thank you oh and i still still because i'm very honored that you chose me to be your podcasting co-host you know i have i have no direct recollection of why i chose you it doesn't matter other than that we had been we had done some podcasts together and i thought it was good and i liked the i it was I like how we got on, on those podcasts that we,

that we just did kind of as random people who didn't know each other. Um, I thought that the, the connection was good and I liked the work that you did on, on the prompt. Yeah. Especially. Um,

but I, I actually don't remember like the thought process of like Mike's the guy. Uh, I, I wish I did remember that part of it and i don't but i i can put those two things together that we had had some good interactions on inquisitive or command space i guess at the time and that i and that i liked uh listening to the prompt as i was power sliding through uh infinite loop yeah all right we need to do some hashtag ask upgrade questions questions. Good idea.

Because this office gets quite warm. Yeah, well, we didn't want birds. Didn't know that, yeah. This is why we podcast in the morning here, Mike. And I'm not dressed for summer today. Today's episode is brought to you by Linode. With Linode, you can instantly deploy and manage an SSD server in the Linode cloud. You get everything running in just seconds.

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a try today. That is linode.com slash upgrade and the promo code upgrade2019 to learn more, sign up and make the most of that $20 credit. Our thanks to Linode for their support of this show and all of RelayFM. It is time for some hashtag ask upgrade questions.

My first one comes from Catherine. With the iPhone 8 shipping before the iPhone 10 in 2017 and the iPhone XS shipping before the XR in 2018, which will ship first this year, the 11 or the 11 Pro? Hmm. I think

they'll ship at the same time. I think. And this is going to be the first time in years that they will ship at the same time. Yeah, on September 20th. Because that would be the expectation time in years right that they'll all ship at the same time yeah on september 20th because that would be the expectation i mean because the i think that will attend ship later because they were struggling to make it yeah these are both not new models right the the reason if if the the common pattern in katherine's two examples is there was a model that was basically an iteration of an existing model and then there was a brand new model and this year as far as we can tell they're both iterations on

existing models so they should be able to drop them at the same time but i did want to include this question because that's a fun little tidbit yeah i like that it's a little logic problem too it's like a can be released with b but it can't sit next to C. So then who does C go to lunch with? Who's in the trunk? Who's in the backseat? I don't know. Andrea says, on a recent episode, Jason mentioned a transcription service that he uses. I'm assuming this is for the conference calls from the quarterly earnings. Must be.

Which is it? It is called Trint, T-R-I-N-T. I hate that name. It is a terrible name. Trint. Trintint he's your friend they're good dogs trint trint transcription but this is how would you write trint does it do a good job yes so what's great about it is there are a lot of services and there are a lot of engines that will take audio files and turn them into text. That it's this speech-to-text transcription service.

And those vary in quality. And they keep getting better. And I even noticed just using Trent the last couple of years. Trent, that it keeps getting better. But the best thing about it is they built this web app around it that's a text editor where you can click at any point in the transcript and hear the audio from that part and as it goes it highlights the words so I'm able to play the audio of the call while reading the transcript and editing it to be correct

very easily that used to be really hard because you had I had like a file in iTunes and I was playing it and pausing it and backing it up and all of that and then text in a text editor. And that Trent editor – Trent? Trent. Present is good because it puts it all together and it's the best one I've seen. So this is – you're doing this after the conference call? I'm doing it during. I actually sent Audio Hijack.

I sent Audio Hijack to split a new MP3 every seven minutes. And I will upload seven minutes. And then I will transcribe that while the next seven minutes is recording. And then when I'm done with mine, I will upload the next MP3. And I go like that. So you're not listening to the call live? I'm not. I'm listening to the call while I'm transcribing it.

So everything's seven minutes behind? Well, it becomes about 25, 30 minutes behind by the time i get to the end but yeah so when you're tweeting i'm not tweeting dan moran is tweeting haha right yes dan is listening live and tweeting things i am not listening live but i'm transcribing behind a little bit everyone that i know that does anything to do with the apple quarterly earnings thing i just feel so sorry for them because everybody's quarterly earnings situation seems to be horrible if you're doing any type of reporting or anything whether you're creating charts and i don't know all i have to do is i got my i got my apple script for charts and i got trent to do the transcripts and my job is so much easier now than it used to be because I got these tools to do this stuff.

I don't remember if I publicly thanked you for the charts yet because you changed them. I did change my charts. To have absolute values and the four-quarter rolling average. Together. Because I could never understand the rolling average and I needed the numbers and couldn't get them. Now you've got them. The bars are the absolute. Don't thank me.

Thank Dr. Drang. I'll thank Dr. Drang too. Dr. Drang was my, he's my Yoda of charts. Because I still, I mean, I know the four quarter rolling average is useful to some people, but I just don't know why anyone needs it i like it because it it smooths out that winter quarter being enormous so that you can see trends more easily but you're right it's not the real number but i i can still see trends looking year over year there are still trends the trends are still there well you're you're more advanced than some year over year is more important than the year itself.

That's why I have that other chart that is just the year over year percentage change which is kind of a nice chart. You never had all of the charts. All the great charts. Summer of fun! Ben says, this is probably a follow up from last episode. Every time somebody brings up the iMac

with spinning drive and says that Apple are doing it for cost, I think Saturn SSDs are cheap drop-in replacements for hard disks. Apple does it to make the base level purposely bad. It's not a cost thing. What do you think of that? Are there any other reasons for it? Yeah, I went back and forth with Ben on Twitter about this a little bit. I think

it's a mistake to look at to make assumptions about things like unit price. I am sure that for a comparable amount of storage, um, just in what I was looking like a hard drive is at least like half the cost of an SSD. So I think, do I think that Apple is purposely making the base model iMac bad? I don't, because I think I think what's really happening here is

that they know a lot of people buy the base model, that they are just able to afford the base model. And they are making it cheaper by putting cheaper components in it. They are able to make it cheaper. And, you know, part of that is their insistence on a certain profit margin. But I think it's a mistake because you've got to think, what are Apple supply parts or supply costs? What are those costs? What are their standards in terms of reliability? What is their feeling about what the basic amount of storage that an iMac should have. They probably know how people use these iMacs and they realize that for the people who

are using an iMac, they are putting photos and videos on there, which means they need more storage and the SSD is not going to satisfy them. They have all that data. So I don't think Apple's making their iMac purposefully bad. I think that they are trying to provide a balance of functionality, including having space on your iMac hard drive for media with price. And I get it. That said, I feel like it is the few model, I think there's one model left that doesn't even have fusion drive where it's just the slow 5400 rpm hard drive like i this is just like all of our complaints back in the day about base storage on an iphone or about the five gigs of free icloud that Apple's base is lower than they think it is. And it's kind of crappy. And it's sort of

beneath their what they should consider acceptable for a customer. So that I mean, that's kind of my answer to Ben is that they're not SATAs are SATA or SSDs are not cheap. They're not cheaper, dropin replacements for hard drives they do have cost it's more than a hard drive especially per gigabyte and and if you if you're going to say oh well just drop in a 256 ssd instead of a terabyte spinning disk it's like but apple knows that those users are going to be unsatisfied with 256 of internal storage so and just saying oh well you can attach an external usb a lot of people don't do that so i i think apple's decisions

about the imac are more complex and that uh but that said i think that it's still a mistake that what i think their level of base is still a little too low. I get why they might not want to go all SSD right now. But the Fusion Drive is not great. But at least that's something in terms of making the, you know, the basic Mac experience better. Because the fact is that Apple has spent the last what five years, kind of optimizing everything they do for SSD. And what that means is that the iMac experience is even worse than it was, because now Apple sort of expects you to have an SSD and that they still sell these computers that don't have them. Laurie, this is, we mentioned this earlier, they ask, what's your

take on the idea that Apple TV Plus will somehow offer access to some sort or some subset of the itunes movie rental catalog i haven't seen this mentioned anywhere but barring inevitable licensing issues it seems like the only way they can justify ten dollars a month yeah we talked about it um it's a it's a fun idea but um i keep coming back to the contracts, which is, I'm sure, right, there's a wholesale price for every rental that they're paying to the studio. And they've got a contract somewhere. Even if contractually they could just basically buy rentals, they're presumably going to pay the wholesale price for that that's a lot of money it's not going to happen for that reason and i will bet you that their contract doesn't let them do this i will bet you that there's something in there about furnishing these via a subscription model or something like that, that precludes them from

doing this. And even if it doesn't, I think it would probably anger their partners if they did this because they, their partners with this content have streaming deals with prices and windows of release for streaming. So if Apple tried to hack the system by doing this i think they would anger their partners um plus they couldn't afford it plus um there's probably a legal language against it so i like it as an idea i think it would be great to say you get four free rentals when you sign up for apple tv plus but i i just really doubt that it's feasible. And Daniel asks, Jason, how often do you use the health features of the Apple Watch, such as the ECG? And how much value do you think that the health features actually adds to the watch as a selling point? I don't use the ECG very often at all.

I used it sort of as a novelty when they rolled it out but i do use the fitness tracking all the time i close my rings and every time i take the dog for a walk i uh start a new activity and a new workout i absolutely do all of those things so those almost every day i would say i think it's interesting as well to see different people's perspectives on it. Like, because Daniel's saying, do you add that much as it adds as a selling point? I think the health features are the selling point now. I think everything else is additive. Yeah. I mean, for me, I'm definitely in the middle where the health and wellness features are

balanced with the kind of convenience of having my, you know, weather and getting a push notification and going for a, I mean, although that's kind of a health feature, being able to go for a walk or a run with my AirPods and podcasts without bringing my phone with me is actually a nice thing. But it is kind of related to that. health but it is kind of related to that because really i think that for most people for most people if they're not doing the health stuff the watch is a nice to have like it's adding some benefit but it's not massively different right than your phone which had all of that information and has all that information on it but the phone cannot give you with health benefits that the watch can it just can't do it right like it can't do all of the tracking of your exercises in the same way it doesn't do your heart rate it doesn't do any of

that um and so that's what the watch being a device that is physically connected to your body can give you outside of that you could your phone can do can do all of it and does a better job of many of those things than the Apple Watch can as well. I think the Apple Watch is first and foremost a health and activity device, and then also is a connectivity device. Yeah, I think that's fair. When they initially launched it, they had those the other way around, and it didn't work out. And 10 other things that it was also not.

And when they flipped that around and made it health and activity focused first, which is also what Apple's entire message is now. And then also it's this other great thing, which is also even better if you're doing health and activity stuff at the same time. Because an Apple Watch is never the best device to send a text message or listen to a podcast or make a phone call.

It's never the best device for those. But it's really useful for those things if you're also working out at the same time right so that's kind of where i think it is and how have has a user using relics from the past treated you that is the other part of daniel's question and i'm perfectly happy with my with my non-apple watch life i like rear watches they they're more attractive to me i get what i want out of a watch most which is being able to see the time whenever i want to look at the time. Like, don't move your wrist. Can you see the time?

Yeah, it's 2.40. It's on my Mac menu bar. But look, I can see the time by just glancing down. That's what I want, right? And I don't want the connectivity stuff and the health, I guess. I don't know. It's just not my thing at the moment.

That's fine. That's fine. That's fine. And then our friend Stephen Hackett, you know, he puts the watch on for workouts. It's basically a Fitbit for him. And I have done that, but then stopped doing that because then my watch was never charged and I didn't want to leave it on the charger for like weeks like days or like whatever but the irony of it is that a lot of people i know have gotten into mechanical watches because of the apple watch yeah that they were like oh apple watch i'll wear a watch and then sort of like wearing a watch is good how about a mechanical

watch and then they're off they go they're into the goodbye the wild blue yonder of the mechanical watch world. So everybody can listen to that episode of ATP where Marco did his data dump about watches. I have a hand-me-down. We were talking about this because of the context. I have a big wedding anniversary coming up. There's a question of what to get for the wedding anniversary. Was it maybe a pen?

Maybe a mechanical watch? These are things Mike likes. anniversary, you know, was it maybe a pen, maybe a mechanical watch? Oh, these are things Mike likes. And I have more pens, nice pens than I've ever had in my life. And in terms of the watches, not only do I wear my Apple Watch every day, but I also have my dad's Rolex that he bought in the 60s in Switzerland. And that's nice for special occasions like hosting a game show. And so I'm happy. I've got a nice, fancy mechanical watch, and I've got my Apple Watch, and I'm good. Thank you to everybody that sent in Ask Upgrade questions. You can always send in questions for us to end the show with the hashtag AskUpgrade,

and you can always help us open the show with the hashtag SnellTalk. If you want to find our show notes online, you can go to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 260. Or you can check in your podcast app of choice, and the link should be there too. Hopefully, maybe, possibly next week we will be drafting, but you're going to have to wait and see about that one. We just don't know yet. We don't know.

We'll find out. We'll find out. And then maybe in a couple of weeks, aside from event time. But this could be the end of the summer of fun. Summer of fun. Summer of fun! Maybe. It's getting a little quieter.

Is it going to go yet? Nobody knows. If you want to find Jason online, sixcuddles.com, theincomparable.com. Jason is the host of many shows here at RelayFM, as I am, relay.fm slash shows for those.

Jason is at jsnl, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks to our sponsors this week, the fine folk over at Pingdom, Linode, and Smile. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

Goodbye, Jason Snell. Hey. High five.